Reivo sat cross-legged on his bed, the system screen hovering silently before him, casting a pale blue glow across the dark room. His sharp green eyes scanned the options, calculating, judging, doubting.
Waking Terror. A low-tier fear spell. Illusions and panic. Simple, but too unreliable. Reivo's enemies wouldn't be simple minds to trick.
Veil of the Forgotten. More interesting. Rare. Tactical. Cloaking himself and his summons in a shroud of unreality... but the drawback made him pause. Every time it activated, it would numb his own senses as well. A double-edged veil.
Then his eyes landed on the third option:
Nightborn Pact.
A chill brushed his spine. The description was sparse, but the meaning behind the words was clear. It was not just a skill. It was a contract.
> Enter a self-induced sleep state to reach a Nightmare's personal realm. Within this dream-territory, you must survive its test. If successful, forge a permanent contract with a powerful Nightmare.
Reivo stared at it for several seconds more, then inhaled slowly. He'd survived goblins. Trauma. Torture. The death of everything he'd loved.
He wasn't afraid of nightmares.
"I choose Nightborn Pact."
The interface shimmered, then vanished.
He sat there for a long moment, the silence of the room pressing in like a physical weight. Then he lay back onto the mattress, arms crossed behind his head, eyes staring at the ceiling.
"No fear. No hesitation. If this is the path I've been given, then I walk it now. Power doesn't wait for those who hesitate."
He closed his eyes and activated his skill.
---
He fell asleep.
But there was no sensation of sleep. One moment he sat in the silence of his room, the next, the floor had vanished from beneath him. Wind roared in his ears. Blood-slick mist whipped past his face.
Then—he felt his feet touching the floor.
But not on stone. The ground beneath him was wet.
Blood.
It pooled thick and cold beneath his hands, rippling faintly with his movements. A forest stretched around him—twisted trees, black and gnarled, with bark like cracked bone. The sky overhead was a hollow void, where stars bled red instead of shining.
A crimson mist slithered through the branches, and the silence was absolute.
No birds. No insects. Just the sound of distant dripping.
Reivo stood slowly. His boots squelched in the blood. He reached for a weapon, but had none.
"Of course," he muttered. "A test."
He began to walk, drawn to the dripping sound.
Hours seemed to pass. Maybe days. Time was strange here. The trees never changed, the red fog thickened and faded without reason, and scattered through the forest were corpses. Mutilated, twisted corpses. Some human. Others... not. Creatures with horns, talons, too many limbs, or none at all. All of them broken. All of them drained of blood.
At last, in a clearing lit by a sky that wept crimson tears, Reivo found it.
The Nightmare.
It stood motionless at the center of the clearing.
A tall figure wrapped in a tattered, rotting robe that dripped with gore. Its chest was bare muscle, cords of flesh twitching with unnatural movement. A heavy iron mask hid its face, rusted and cracked, with a mouth-slit that wept a constant trickle of crimson ichor.
Its arms were the worst.
Twisted, elongated, ending in blades of rusted bone—not held, but formed from its very limbs. Like its hands had been reshaped by agony and alchemy into living weapons.
It didn't speak.
It didn't move.
But Reivo felt it. A pressure in his skull. A voice without sound, clawing at the inside of his thoughts.
"Bleed for me."
Suddenly, the world shifted.
The forest blurred.
And Reivo found himself somewhere else.
---
A long corridor. Stone. Cold. Lit by rows of candles that dripped red wax.
He stood in front of a door. On the wood, carved deep:
"Only the guilty bleed."
His hands were covered in blood. Fresh. Warm.
The door creaked open by itself.
Inside—
His family.
Alive.
His mother looked up from the table, smiling gently. His father gestured for him to sit. His sister grinned, tossing him a wooden sword. "Come on, hero. Training time."
Reivo staggered forward.
This was wrong.
He knew it was wrong.
He took a step—and their faces changed. Twisted. Mouths stretching impossibly wide. Eyes melting into black pits. Blood sprayed from their ears, mouths, throats—
Then silence.
They slumped dead at the table.
A voice echoed in his mind again:
"One cannot wield what one refuses to understand. To command the darkness, you must first walk unflinching through it."
The door behind him shut. The room burned away.
Reivo fell again.
---
Back in the clearing.
The creature now stood closer.
"A trial of guilt," Reivo whispered. "Of pain. Of memory."
He understood.
To earn power over this thing, he had to suffer. He had to accept everything. Not reject it. Not fight it. Endure it.
He stepped forward, unarmed.
The Nightmare raised one of its bladed arms—long, jagged and dripping with blood .
Reivo didn't flinch. He spread his arms, exposing his chest, his stance steady even as the air itself seemed to recoil.
"Bleed me, then," he said. "See if I break."
The monster didn't hesitate.
The blade descended.
There was no mercy in the strike. Pain lanced through his side, sharp enough to wrench the breath from his lungs. Warmth spilled down his ribs in a steady, unforgiving stream.
A second blade followed immediately, then a third—each cut shallow enough to spare his life, yet precise, intentional, crafted to hurt. They didn't slice deep; they carved meaning. A cruel pattern he could not yet decipher.
The Nightmare worked methodically, almost ritualistically. Each new wound burned with a heat that felt wrong, as if the pain itself was being amplified—drawn out, stretched thin, forced to linger. His nerves screamed. His muscles trembled.
He should have collapsed.
He should have died.
But this place—this trial—did not allow death. The illusion sealed his fate in a loop where agony never quite reached its final point. Every blow that should have ended him instead only reset the threshold, pushing him to endure more.
Time unraveled.
Minutes dissolved into hours. Hours into something else entirely. The sky—or whatever passed for it in this realm—shifted from black to red to something colorless. He lost track of how many times the blades struck. Hundreds. Thousands. Each indistinguishable from the last except for the fresh spike of torment.
His vision blurred until shapes were nothing but shadows. His heartbeat faltered, stuttered, then clawed itself upright again. His breath came in ragged, shallow pulls as the world narrowed to three things: the Nightmare, the blade, and the pain.
Yet he remained standing.
Barely.
Shaking.
But unbroken.
What would have reduced others to pleading or madness only hollowed him out, carving space where something new—something colder, harder—could take root.
And through it all, Reivo never screamed.
Not once.
Even when the Nightmare paused—its blades dripping with blood, its iron mask tilting in a strange, silent appraisal—he met its stare without wavering. Chest heaving. Legs trembling. But unbroken.
The creature raised its arms again, higher this time, as if preparing a final, decisive strike.
Reivo braced for it… but no blow came.
The air shuddered. The the blood pooling around them stilled.
Slowly, the Nightmare lowered its arms.
For a long moment it simply watched him, as if weighing what it had carved from him, what it had tried to take and failed to break.
Then—
It stepped back.
Its towering form straightened, the blood dripping from its limbs like rain. With a motion that felt impossibly deliberate for something born of fear and cruelty, the Nightmare inclined its head.
It bowed.
A final system chime echoed.
[Contract Formed]
Reivo collapsed forward into darkness, a faint, bitter smile ghosting his lips.
He had won.
And now, it would serve.